Backwaters
by schlimazel
Summary: That, the perfect corner of a perfect eye. No lookingglass or any amount of foresight could have compared to what had passed between them by raw and mortal vision.  [SalazarxGodric]


The corner of the eye is a wondrous thing, in every manner and respect of the term. Situated in the most subtle and inconspicuous speck of existence on the face, it is decent for keeping track of friends, who he generally keeps at a close distance, and ideal for spying upon enemies, who generally put themselves closer, whether he wants them there or not. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, the corners are the peepholes out of it. The cobwebs bunched up where the pane meets the sill, where the spider might nest in sullen comfort and lord her kingdom; the crack in the thin-spun glass that parts for wind and water and everything important to take refuge, while simultaneously managing to keep every slightly more significant thing out in the sufferable wild. And it is through this tiny recess in an otherwise impenetrable, imperturbable countenance, that the exchange occurred to begin with.

In the grand and speculative scheme of the world, by the uncorrupted purity of sheer beginner's luck, two drops of water in all the seven seas had only just met with the force of a crashing tide, holding in a fleeting instance that could not be measured by even a heartbeat, before parting as violent as the riptide from the white and lonely, barren shore. He knew, then, that it had not been any meeting of souls, but an utter exposure that had left each man's Inner Being naked and vulnerable as the despoiled child at the mercy of the trained warrior. Defences had been raped, ripped away by the lashes and peeled apart from below the skin surrounding that particle of wet, pink flesh that was barely noticeable in the shadow of the milky white globe of the eye. And he knows, now, all that he had known in the frothing wake of the incident-- and this is what, in that shattered, quantum particle of a moment, he had been in full awareness of.

For one thing, it was the single most beautiful portion of the world he has ever beheld, and the most intricate. Perhaps, even, the most intimate, and he is seasoned enough by now to know the smallest niches of a man's body, down to the ridges between the cellular membranes of dry skin moistened by the gossamer blanket of sweat, by the glistening rivulets of tears, and occasionally by the blossoming red tendrils of blood. That slight curve of the spherical eye was reflective and unmarred like molten glass, but entirely solid except for the bare traces of wetness that lined the bottom to keep the natural seeing stone lubricated for its flawless motion. It was less white than he had predicted, cast in the tremulous shadow of lashes that do not belong on any boy or man who puts so little care in external appearances, pays so little thought to the shell that must guard his most precious and bejewelled of secrets that not even his brethren may know. The place where the convex runs its smoothest was a transition from the pearly luminescence into a fanning of thin, pink blood vessels, outstretched like the groping fingers of younglings for the iris prize forever out of reach. And, opposite to the highest curtain of lashes, dark hairs stab shortly outward, like a pillowing of needles a shade darker than the rest of him.

For another, this glimpse of being he had been granted is entirely inexplicable. Where even young men should have the faintest of lines to infer weariness, or age by the measure of moments, or especially experience by too many close-encounters on the field of battle-- there was nothing. Only the strip of unmarked skin that stretched beneath that mark of space, surrounding the secret window to a man's core.

That, the perfect corner of a perfect eye. No looking-glass or any amount of foresight could have compared to what had passed between them by raw and mortal vision. An alignment that, by all rights, should not have happened, but opened pools of depth left to be explored or unexplored by eye and hand and mind and heart. Incomprehensible as they had been in the span of time left to them, they had seen completely and utterly past privacy and pride, and glazed over souls.

And now, as he continues down the corridor at a luxurious pace that might as well be a sprint for the years that must have passed when two souls brushed, Salazar realizes that, for all his introspection and attention to utmost detail, he still does not know the colour of Godric's eyes, or how to read his secrets, or even how to speak to the fool and extract a response in anything other than the rough, abrasive English of the moors that Godric is so fond of using in high society. He has seen everything, and learned absolutely nothing.

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**S. Slytherin & G. Gryffindor.** Standard disclaimers.  
Response to Carrot Stix's_ Descriptiveness Challenge (500+ Words)_ on HPFF.

This has been up forever on my HPFF page, and I totally forgot to upload it here. ...Oops?  
could use some more SxG, anyways. They get no love around here.


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